Maynard Francis Hurst

Name: Maynard Francis Hurst

Gender: Male

Age: 17

Grade: 12th Grade

School: Aurora High School

Hobbies and Interests: Anime Club, Book Club, calligraphy, sonnet writing, and reading fantasy literature

Appearance: Maynard is 5’4” and weighs approximately 112 pounds. He has a narrow face with high cheekbones. His skin tone is a pale one, and his eyes are almond shaped with green irises. They are framed by lengthy eyelashes, which give them a rather feminine appearance. Dark rings are common underneath Maynard's eyes, as he has fallen into a bad habit of staying up late. He has a minor indentation on his forehead, from when he was younger, when he ran into the corner of a door, but it isn't especially noticeable. He has a spray of freckles across the bridge of his wide and prominent nose, and a few are peppered across his chin and cheeks. Maynard's cheeks easily redden when flustered or embarrassed. His eyebrows are arched, and lighter than the hair above his forehead. They are usually furrowed, giving him a perpetual look of disdain. His lips are thin, and surround a small mouth which is filled with well-maintained teeth.

His hair is dark auburn, and naturally curly. Maynard has it obsessively cropped to frame his face; once every six weeks he gets a trim from the neighborhood barber, and he is a recognized face amongst most of the staff. It falls down to the middle of the back of his neck in a v-shape. Despite this, a cow lick occasionally floats down across his brow, much to his chagrin.

When around the house, Maynard wears loose and floaty shirts, mostly blue or white, and corduroy trousers, not taking any particular worry in his appearance. At school, however, he prefers to wear neat and well-prepared clothing. A typical outfit would be a collared checkered blue-and-violet long sleeved shirt, a silver-stripped waistcoat, grey jeans, knee-length blue socks, and finely polished dress shoes, or, alternatively, white-and-grey boating shoes. On the day of the abduction, Maynard was wearing a black-and-white striped shirt with an ocher colored waistcoat, grey jeans, and a pair of new black boating shoes.

Biography: Maynard Hurst was born to Arnold Patrick Hurst and Annabeth Jayne Blackwell Hurst on the 19th of October in Sandy, Utah. He is the youngest of three children. Arnold and Patrick's daughter, June Annabeth Hurst, is five years older than Maynard, and their elder son, August Arnold Hurst, is three years older than Maynard.

His older siblings were planned, but Maynard was not, as Arnold's job was only sufficient enough to support a family of four. When Annabeth found out she had become pregnant with a third child, it threw the Hurst family off balance. When Maynard was born, his family struggled along for a few months, but after Arnold's mother died of cancer, and his twin sisters, Dorothy and Olivia, died in a car accident a few months later, Arnold was left without any close family members, and struggled to make a decent living from the antiques shop that he owned, which was falling into disrepair. During this time Annabeth made contact with her mother, Jayne Blackwell, and the family decided to relocate to Annabeth's hometown, due to the bad memories that Sandy held for them, and Jayne promised to help them with their struggles.

Upon arriving in Seattle, when Maynard had just turned 18 months, Arnold struggled to find work for his chosen field, the buying and selling of antiques, and was unable to hold down any other jobs for more than a month. After minor deliberation Annabeth decided to return to her original field, as an accountant, and Arthur and Jayne were left to look after June, August, and Maynard. Although Arnold tried to be a good father, a lot of the work fell to Jayne. When the family moved out of Jayne's house into their own, Arnold was distant, and preferred to spend time with the toys and antiques he collected, alone with his thoughts. The move occurred when Maynard was only four, and he remembers little of the time his family stayed with his grandmother. His siblings cared deeply for Jayne, and were upset that they wouldn’t see her on such a constant basis, but Maynard, being so young at the time, felt indifferent.

From the start of school, Maynard excelled at reading and writing, but little else. As a result he tended to dismiss the other subjects, but, at the age of eight, a teacher pointed out that some of his other classmates were as skilled as he was in English and he made more of an effort in other subject areas. He lacked any expertise in gym, particularly swimming, and the prowess of several of his classmates in the subject made him realize that being skilled in one area of schooling was not so spectacular.

Maynard's passion for calligraphy came about when he was 10, and a favorite teacher criticized his chaotic and illegible handwriting. From that point Maynard strived to make his script perfect. He borrowed several books on handwriting and worked on it for several hours day, through rewriting schoolwork and excerpts from books. Eventually Maynard became curious regarding more elaborate fonts and scripts, and so began to research the art of calligraphy. The first font he mastered was Gabrielle, which he decided to learn after developing a crush on a girl with the name. While his feelings for her persisted, it was the sole font he wrote in, but when they dissipated he began to look for others. Gabrielle, however, remains a font he writes in if taking dictated notes or writing in a hurry. Currently, he employs Basic Cursive for normal writing, but for projects he uses several others. His favorite is Fancy Card Text, but he finds it difficult to write from memory, and it takes him an inconvenient length of time to write in this font. His skill level varies from style to style, but once he becomes confident in a font, Maynard is highly proficient at it.

When he was 10, Maynard ran into the corner of a door at a party, and the damage that resulted from this left him with an indentation upon his forehead. The damage that occurred from his incident with the door left torn tissue in his nose that progressively worsened, and led to frequent nosebleeds from the age of 11. His parents weren't initially concerned, but upon yet another excessive bleed, they took him to the doctor who confirmed that his nose would require cauterisation to seal the damaged areas and stem any further nosebleeds. After the procedure took place, Maynard was happy that they rapidly decreased in frequency, but the cauterisation led to his voice becoming a more nasally and less refined one than before. Maynard believes such a vocal pattern to be embarrassing, and this has led him to speak less than in elementary school unless prompted to.

When he was 11 Maynard decided to become a vegetarian after falling in love with a lamb during a class trip, and until he was 12 he was more vocal in his stance on meat eating. However, upon realizing that people weren't likely to be swayed by the protests of a kid, he quieted down, but continued with his new-found lifestyle. His family members aren't vegetarians, and his meals were originally bland, due to Arnold's lack of expertise in preparing meals without meat as a key ingredient. However, Maynard assisted him in choosing easy meat-free alternatives and their fortnightly shop for spices and produce has become a sort of regular bonding session. His mother does worry about Maynard's health, having been raised by a father adamant over the benefits of meat eating, and so plies Maynard with a myriad of different supplements. Maynard takes them willfully, but isn't as concerned as his mother. When with others, Maynard doesn't often bring his lifestyle up, unless it is necessary, such as going out for a meal. This helps him avoid any conflicts that might arise from his choices.

His main hobby is Anime Club: when he first saw Avatar: The Last Airbender as a 12 year old, he began to look further into the genre it was inspired by, and when he first enrolled at Aurora High School he immediately signed up for Anime Club. Although it's his fourth year at the school, Maynard still feels somewhat out of depth amongst the more obsessive members that occupy the group, but he can hold his own in any trivia competition concerning his favorite manga and anime, namely Black Butler and ''Death Note. Black Butler and Death Note'' are his favourites due to the complex storylines that both enjoy and the large casts of characters that Maynard has become very attached to. Finnian and Elizabeth are his favourites from Black Butler due to their happy-go-lucky attitudes and Light is Maynard’s favourite character from Death Note due to his complex morality and motivations. Because of the conclusion of Death Note several years ago, Maynard mainly focuses his attention upon Black Butler, but occasionally reads through the backlog of Death Note. He generally reads manga more than he watches anime, as manga are more easily accessible over the Internet, and he is more passionate about reading series, as it enables his imagination to have more of an impact. Maynard particularly enjoys manga and anime due to the fact that there is a plethora of different series and themes, yet the art style remains somewhat similar in every one.

Another hobby of Maynard's is sonnet writing. When his sister was doing a unit on poetry at middle school, Jayne brought her a tome on sonnet structures, but the book languished and was forgotten about. When Maynard was 14 he had to read Emma by Jane Austen for a school project and was inspired by the protagonist's list of books she had decided to read and decided to make his own. Amongst the 100 he chose to read was every book the family owned that he was allowed access to. The sonnet book was one of the first Maynard read, and he was immediately taken with the style of poetry. He abandoned his list of books and began actively seeking out famous examples of the style. He favors more famed sonnet writers, such as Shakespeare, Dante, and Francesco Petrarca. When writing his own sonnets, Maynard tends to stick to iambic pentameter due to its relative simplicity, but he hopes to advance to a more complicated style upon gaining further experience. When he first began writing sonnets, typical subjects would most often be his current affection holder, and nature. Now he still occasionally writes about a passing crush, but has branched out into more abstract concepts, including the afterlife. Now, scarcely a day goes past when he doesn't have an idea for one; sometimes they come in the most inopportune moments. Although passing interest has been expressed in some form, he doesn't share his sonnets with anybody because he is embarrassed by their possible poor quality and fearful of any revelations that might arise from them. Most of them are of an average quality, but occasionally a more inspired piece might pass through.

From a young age Maynard became skilled at reading, and directed this at the genre his household contained the most of: fantasy. Fantasy is Maynard's favorite genre because the fantastic elements help to distract him from the monotony of his day to day life. He enjoyed Harry Potter, like many of his classmates, and eventually moved onto The Lord of the Rings and other famed works of the genre. Nowadays his main non-compulsory reading choice is high fantasy literature, because of the epic scale and large casts of characters. Naturally, fantasy is the genre he talks about the most during meetings of the school's Book Club, which he joined at the advent of his freshman year. Five months ago, he came into contact with the A Song of Ice and Fire series by George RR Martin, and this has become his main reading source since that time, as he enjoys the deconstruction of traditional fantasy characters and situations. He briefly toyed with reading Twilight when the craze was at its peak, but decided against it, and the series is now one he refuses to touch. Maynard likes The Wheel of Time, but is not as obsessed with it as he is with Harry Potter, and now A Song of Ice and Fire. However, his connection with The Wheel of Time is strong enough that when he heard of Robert Jordan's death, he wept in his room for several hours, and promptly proceeded to engage in a lengthy reread of the series.

Aside from English, Maynard doesn't especially excel in any subject in particular, but achieves average to above average results in the subjects he does take. Out of all of them, Mathematics troubles him, in particular Trigonometry and Geometry, due to his difficulty understanding their basic formulae. Drama is a somewhat worrisome subject as well. Although Maynard is capable at written work, he isn't confident enough to portray a variety of roles realistically. English is his best subject, although he is criticized for his occasional tendency to be over-descriptive. He maintains straight As in English, and for his other subjects he is an A- to B student. His overall GPA is 3.71. Maynard doesn't play any sports due to fear of injury, and he dislikes most physical activity. He likes school, but does find the relatively heavy workload that comes with it to be close to overwhelming at times, but most of this is self-inflicted.

Maynard is capable of sustaining strong relationships with people with similar hobbies and interests, but usually prefers to communicate via social networking, text messages, and e-mails. He does so because this cuts down, but doesn't fully eliminate, the constant non-sequiturs he is prone to spurting out during in-person conversations. Such statements are less frequent around those he is closest to, but when placed in a similar position with others he doesn't know as well, his nerves tend to cause lots of them. Most of his friends from middle school have fallen by the wayside, as they developed different hobbies and interests, and Maynard didn't make much of an effort to maintain a relationship with them. At high school however, he quickly found his niche amongst students similar to himself. Maynard and his siblings were always close, and he was left feeling abandoned when they left within two months of each other when he was 15. This caused him to become more attached to the group of friends he was a part of.

Maynard has never been in a romantic relationship, casual or serious, despite developing several severe crushes since the age of ten. A friend of his once quipped that Maynard crushes on any girl who talks to him. He has always been let down lightly by the subjects of his affection; he never tells them in person. His crush is usually conveyed through a third-party or a private message, and they're usually amiable about it.

Maynard tries to pay attention in class, but if the subject matter is not of particular interest to him, he finds it all too easy to start coming up with ideas for sonnets and zoning out. He does respect his teachers, though, and is annoyed if any other student is disrespectful to them. However, he doesn't speak up against such behavior.

Maynard takes an interest in politics and world problems, but finds it all too easy to take certain sides just because of his friend's views. He likes to present himself as a nice and amiable student, but is often at the point of exhaustion from too many nights spend reading or writing or doing homework instead of sleeping, and finds it difficult not to get crabby or snarky.

Maynard's relationship with his parents is often uneven. He has never been a great lover of antiques, like his father, or a proficient accountant, like his mother, but his siblings have inherited such passions. Although his love of reading, a passion which is shared with Arnold and Annabeth, enables them to have something to bond over, not having such strong connections with his parents as his siblings has led to Maynard believing himself to be the unfavourite at times. As a result, he strives to achieve well at school to make up for the lack of interests he shares with his parents. After his siblings left, Maynard came to the forefront in his parent's eyes, and they elected to spend more time with him before he too leaves the house. Arnold and Annabeth tried to connect more with Maynard through his interests, but found themselves unable to. As such, they leave him to mostly do his own things. Of his parents, Maynard is closest to his father, mostly because he is more supportive of Maynard's vegetarianism, but that is not to say that he isn't close to his mother, who is the most well-read of Maynard's parents, and often spends hours discussing literature with her son.

Post-high school Maynard intends to place furthering his education on hold in order to explore more of the United States and the surrounding territories. After this he intends to expand into Europe, taking a half-year sabbatical to backpack around the more prominent countries of the continent. Having never travelled anywhere particularly far from his hometown, Maynard is eager to become more worldly before his eventual admission into an Ivy League college to study Literature, which will restrict his opportunities for travel.

Advantages: Maynard's lack of ability to communicate without expelling non-sequiturs and quiet and generally amiable nature gives him an unthreatening image. His fear of injury will decrease any impulsive actions on his part and lead to him generally being more cautious.

Disadvantages: Maynard has kept to a very small group of friends, and when outside said group finds it difficult to communicate with and trust others. Quick to become tetchy and stressed under pressure, Maynard is likely to succumb to such negative attitudes due to the high-pressure nature of SOTF, which would make him an unappealing ally and could contribute to possible poor decision-making.

Designated Number: Male student No. 049

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Designated Weapon: Naginata

Conclusion: There has never been a badass named Maynard in the history of the world, and this kid doesn't look like he's going to buck the trend. He can make a name for himself by writing some sonnets for us before he dies. We could stand to class the game up a bit. - Shamino Warhen

'The above biography is as written by SansaSaver. No edits or alterations to the author's original work have been made.'

Evaluations
Handled by: SansaSaver

Kills: Adam Morgan

Killed By: Ami Flynn

Collected Weapons: Naginata (designated weapon), Beretta 39R machine pistol (BKA prize)

Allies: Adam Morgan, Natali Greer, Michelle Wexler, Virgil Jefferson-Davis, Gwen O'Connor, James Wade

Enemies:

Mid-game Evaluation:

Post-Game Evaluation:

Memorable Quotes:

Other/Trivia

 * Maynard is tied with Sean Mulcahy, Steven Salazar, and Takeshi Yoshikawa for shortest boy in V5.
 * Maynard was the winner of April 2014's Best Kill Award.

Threads
Below is a list of threads that contain Maynard, in chronological order.

The Past:


 * Twice Shy
 * Gwendolyn in Wonderland
 * Bookworms

Pre-Game:
 * Wiping All Out
 * The Anime Nerd and the Band Geek
 * Uhm
 * A Once in a Lifetime Opportunity

V5:
 * Thread Titles Have Never Been My Forte
 * Broken Down
 * Now I'm radioactive! That can't be good!
 * Hanley's Bazaar
 * Poor Unfortunate Souls
 * Reverie
 * Detritus
 * Miles Behind Us
 * Sinner, Winner, Chicken Dinner
 * What Comes After
 * A Manic Depressive Named Laughing Boy

Your Thoughts
''Whether you were a fellow handler in SOTF or just an avid reader of the site, we'd like to know what you thought about Maynard Francis Hurst. What did you like, or dislike, about the character? Let us know here!''

Maynard has a special place in my heart, considering that Natali spent her entire game with him and Adam. That said, his game as a whole was sort of slow. Part of this can be chalked up to the crash back in September 2013, which delayed or cut off a lot of plots across V5. The effect for Adam and Maynard was that their confrontation with Gabriel Lee right after Natali's death was completely removed since Gabriel's handler left the site in the downtime between the crash and thread restoration. This was really unfortunate because with that encounter out the window, Maynard didn't really experience a significant conflict until he lost his composure after hearing of the death of his crush and stabbed Adam during the ensuing freak-out. This was the perfect place to have a significant shift in Maynard, but I feel like it didn't completely stick. You can tell from his narrative that something has changed with him, yes, but on the whole he still feels like the same scared, uncertain kid that he'd been since his first thread. Instead of hitting rock bottom and trying to work his way back up, he keeps slowly falling down until his final thread. I did find his last thread very enjoyable, though; he played off of Juhan and Ami very well, and his death was gruesome in a way that still stands out in my mind. For how likely it is to occur, bungled suicide isn't something we've seen a lot on SOTF and Sansa did a great job of making it both unexpected and plausible (and upsetting, but that's a given).

Overall, I think that I just wish Maynard had gotten to experience more varied situations and maybe interacted with more people besides just sticking by Adam's side and letting him take the lead the whole time. Obviously, the crash was no one's fault here and what happened because of it can't be helped, but I still wonder what could have been. - backslash